“Don’t expect many letters from me Old Scout because this happy land is still wild and as I am writing you now the ground is my chair and the night is my roof. But oh its a grand feeling to be out here and even with the professor playing symphonius strains on his violin and bringing back to me the sweet remembrance of all by-gone days there isn’t a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to be subservient to the wealth, fame, power, etc. of others or to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business.”
To create or build some kind of bridge between Leander’s world and that world where he sought his fortune seemed to Coverly a piece of work that would take strength and perseverance. The difference between the sweet-smelling farmhouse and the room where he lived was abysmal. They seemed to have come from the hands of different creators and to deny one another. Coverly thought about this one rainy night on his way to Cousin Mildred’s, wearing a rented tuxedo. “Come for dinner,” she had asked him, “and then we’ll go to the opera. That ought to be fun for you. It’s Monday night so you’ll have to dress. Everyone dresses on Mondays.” Cousin Mildred’s apartment was in one of those large buildings that Coverly, on his first day, had wondered if he would ever penetrate. Looking up at the building Coverly realized that by all the standards of St. Botolphs it would be condemned as expensive, pretentious, noisy and unsafe. It could not be compared to a nice farm. He took an elevator to the eighteenth floor. He had never approached such an altitude and he entertained himself with some imaginary return to St. Botolphs where he regaled Pete Meacham with a description of this city of towers. He felt worldly and saturnine like a character in a movie. A pretty maid let him in and took him into a parlor for which he was completely unprepared. The walls were half-paneled like the dining-room walls at West Farm. Most of the furniture he recognized since most of it had been stored in the hayloft when he was a boy. There, over the mantelpiece, hung old Benjamin himself, in his peignoir or Renaissance costume, staring out into the room with that harsh and naked look of dishonesty that had made him so unpopular with the family. Most of the lamps had come from the barn or the attic and Grandmother Wapshot’s old moth-eaten sampler (“Unto Us a Son Is Given”) was hanging on the wall. Coverly was studying old Benjamin’s stare when Cousin Mildred blew in—a tall, gaunt woman in a red evening dress that seemed cut to display her bony shoulders. “Coverly!” she exclaimed. “My dear. How nice of you to come. You look just like a Wapshot. Harry will be thrilled. He adores Wapshots. Sit down. We’ll have something to drink. Where are you staying? Who was the woman who answered the telephone? Tell me all about Honora. Oh, you do look like a Wapshot. I would have been able to pick you out in a crowd. Isn’t it nice to be able to recognize people? There’s another Wapshot in New York. Justina. They say she used to play the piano in the five-and-ten-cent store but she’s very rich now. We’ve had Benjamin cleaned. Don’t you think he looks better. Did you notice? Of course, he still looks like a crook. Have a cocktail.”
The butler passed Coverly a cocktail on a tray. He had never drunk a martini cocktail before and to conceal his inexperience he raised the glass to his lips and drained it. He didn’t cough and sputter but his eyes swam with tears, the gin felt like fire and some oscillation or defense mechanism in his larynx began to palpitate in such a way that he found himself unable to speak. He settled down to a paroxysm of swallowing. “Of course, this isn’t my idea of a decent room at all,” Cousin Mildred went on. “It’s all Harry’s idea. I’d much rather have called in a decorator and gotten something comfortable but Harry’s mad for New England. He’s an adorable man and a wizard in the carpet business, but he doesn’t come from anyplace really. I mean he doesn’t have anything nice to remember and so he borrows other people’s memories. He’s really more of a Wapshot than you or I.”
“Does he know about Benjamin’s ear?” Coverly asked hoarsely. It was still hard for him to speak.
“My dear, he knows the family history backwards and forwards,” Cousin Mildred said. “He went to England and had the name traced back to Vaincre-Chaud and he got the crest. I’m sure he knows more about Lorenzo than Honora ever did. He bought all these things from your mother and I must say he paid for them generously and I’m not absolutely sure that your mother—I don’t mean to say that your mother was untruthful—but you know that old traveling desk that always used to be full of mice? Well, your mother wrote and said that it belonged to Benjamin Franklin and I don’t ever remember having heard that before.”
